EDITORIAL: Should Teachers Tweet?

WHETHER A teacher is having a conversation with a student in person, on the phone or on Facebook, the same rules should apply.

Be professional. Be a mentor. But a close friend? That’s probably crossing the line.

Those were the issues that came to the forefront this week at Causey Middle School, when a parent raised questions about contact her daughter had with a teacher on Facebook. E-mails sent to the student through Facebook weren’t sexual or vulgar, but they were personal, leaving the parent concerned that the teacher had acted inappropriately.

The teacher has since been placed on administrative leave, and Mobile County school officials are now speeding up their plans to write a policy on employees’ use of the Internet.

Uppermost in school officials minds’ as they write the policy should be the health and welfare of students. Social networking sites can give adults who want to mistreat youngsters relatively easy access to them.

Just as schools are right to police the conduct of teachers and staff members during and after school, they are right to police what goes on between their employees and students online, and to lay out specific consequences for wrongdoing.

However, Superintendent Roy Nichols is wise not to press for eliminating all contact between teachers and students on social networking sites. To do so would ignore the benefits of the Internet as a modern communications tool.

Rather, the school district can allow the use of online venues such as Facebook and Twitter as long as it has a positive impact on teaching and the school. For instance, teachers can set up mechanisms to remind classes about current assignments or upcoming field trips.

At the same time, the school district must educate employees about what constitutes inappropriate contact online, just as it would educate them about inappropriate language or physical contact in the classroom. For instance, should students have full access to teachers’ personal postings on Facebook? Probably not.

Public school districts face unique challenges because, as governmental entities, they must balance the need to protect students with the First Amendment right to free speech. How to strike just the right balance is likely to be the subject of debate for years to come.

In the meantime, it’s encouraging that Mobile school officials are taking the necessary steps to make sure that children are as protected online as they are on campus. Now it’s up the board to vote to approve a reasonable policy as soon as possible.